the Archdeacons' Registry at Winchester goes no farther back than 1660, and the name of Pope does not occur in it; nor is there any will or grant of letters of administration in the Bishops' or Archdeacons' Registry of any person likely to be the grandfather of the poet. Families of the name of Pope were at that time widely scattered over several of the counties of England, and in the registers of the Prerogative Will Office in Doctors' Commons, at least a hundred persons of the name will be found between the years 1600 and 1700.7 It is worthy of notice, that the name was also common at an early period in the north of Scotland, and that its possessors were remarkable for their adherence to the Roman Catholic Church, as well as for the prevalence amongst them, through successive generations, of the Christian name of Alexander. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were Popes, traders of good account, in Scotland. In 1546, Alexander Pope appears in a deed of the prebendaries and chaplains of King's College, Aberdeen, and twenty years afterwards he was appointed one of the authorities for the suppression of the "rising heresy" then on the eve of resulting in the Reformation. In the MS. records of the College of Douay is the name of Alexander Pope, a priest, who died in 1596. After the Reformation, in 1622, Alexander and William Pope, burgesses of Aberdeen, were cited before the Kirk Session as Romish recusants. Two other burgesses of that city, George and Gilbert Pope, were driven abroad by the persecution of the Roman Catholics, and are found in France between the years 1630 and 1640-Gilbert at Havre as a trader, and George at Paris as "Garde de Marche," or one of the Scottish Guards of the King of France.8 Another

• Information communicated by Charles Wooldridge, Esq., Winchester, who kindly undertook a search for the purpose.

7 In Hampshire there was a succession of Popes possessors of Durley. The name is found in all the southern and midland counties, and in London. A certain Richard Pope, scrivener, in St. Nicholas-lane, was law agent, and afterwards churchwarden of the united parishes of St. Edmund the King and St. Nicholas Acons (in which Lombard-street is situated) from 1697 to 1702.

8 It was long remembered with pride in the families of these "Cavalieros of Fortune," that the Scotch Guard kept the French King company in his private apartments, and that in testimony of their loyalty twenty-six of the number wore white coats of a peculiar fashion, overlaid with lace: six of

THE REV. A. POPE OF CAITHNESS.

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branch of the Popes appeared in the county of Ross in the sixteenth century, whence they spread to the neighbouring counties of Sutherland and Caithness. One of these, Hector Pope, Minister of Loth, was one of the last of the parish ministers of Scotland who retained the "prelatical" liturgy and ceremonial. His son, Alexander Pope, was the Presbyterian minister of Reay, a rural parish in the county of Caithness. This northern Alexander Pope entertained a profound admiration for his illustrious namesake of England; and it is a curious and well-ascertained fact, that the simple, enthusiastic clergyman, in the summer of 1732, rode on his pony all the way from Caithness to Twickenham in order to pay the poet a visit. The latter (according to a family, but not very probable, tradition) felt his dignity a little touched by the absence of the necessary" pomp and circumstance" with which the minister first presumed to approach his domicile; but after the ice of outward ceremony had melted, and their intellects had come in contact, the poet was interested in his visitor, and a friendly feeling was established between them. Several interviews took place, the minister dined with Pope and Bolingbroke, and the poet presented his good friend and namesake, the minister of Reay, with a copy of the subscription edition of the Odyssey, in five volumes, quarto a present which was highly valued, and is still preserved. An occasional correspondence was afterwards kept up between them, of which one letter remains:

cr

"Twickenham, April 28, 1738.

"SIB-I received yours, in which I think you pay me more than is due to me for the accidental advantage which it seems my name has brought you. Whatever that name be, it will prove of value and credit when an honest man bears it, and never else; and therefore I will rather imagine your own good conduct has made it fortunate to you. It is certain I think myself obliged to those persons who do you service in my name, and I am always willing to correspond with you when it can be in any way beneficial to you, as you see by my

these in turn stood next to the royal person on all occasions. Some Scottish antiquaries have attempted to trace the poet to these northern Popes; but the extracts furnished us by Joseph Robertson, Esq., of the Register House, Edinburgh-a zealous and obliging archæologist-do not countenance the supposition.

speedy answer to your last. I should think it an impertinence to write my Lady Sutherland, or I would do so to thank her for the great distinction you tell me she shows me, who have no other merit than loving it wherever I find it, be it in persons of quality or peasants. I am not any altered from what you saw me only by some years, which give me less solicitude for myself (as I am going to want nothing ere it be long), than for others who are to live after me in a world which is none of the best. I am, sincerely, your well-wisher and affectionate servant-A. POPE.

"To Mr. Alexander Pope, at Thurso, in the county of Caithness, North Britain." 9

In the case of his maternal parent, Pope has stated that she was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York, who was married to Thomasine Newton. "She had three brothers, one of whom was killed; another died in the service of King Charles [Charles I.]; the eldest, following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family." 10 It is certain that in Worsborough Dale, in Yorkshire, a house is still pointed out in which, according to tradition, Editha or Edith Turner was born. This antique mansion is called Marrow House, from the name of a subse

9 From certified copy in the possession of W. Murray, Esq., of Geanies, Ross-shire. The original was in the hands of the late Joseph Gordon, W.S., Edinburgh. Mr. Pope, the clergyman, was a good scholar and antiquary. He translated Torfous's Orcades, and was author of the Description of the Shires of Caithness, Strathnaver, and Sutherland. (See Pennant's Tour, 1774.) Also, Description of the Dune of Dornadilla, Àrchæologia, 1779.

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10 Note on Epistle to Arbuthnot, and account of Mrs. Pope's death in Grub-street Journal, June 14, 1733. The latter was evidently written by the poet. In the biographical statement sent to Curll, signed "P. T." (which we assume to have been Pope's), it is also mentioned that his mother was one of the seventeen children of William Turnor, Esq., formerly of Burfit Hall, in the *** Riding of Yorkshire: two of her brothers were killed in the Civil Wars." In a letter to Swift, dated March 29, Pope says that the previous day was his mother's birthday. The poet's parents were apparently both of the same age, born in 1642, and consequently in their forty-sixth year at the time of Pope's birth. The latter states that his mother was ninety-three years of age at the period of her death, in 1733, but the entry in the register (her baptism following that of an elder sister) would seem to make her age only ninety-one. Swift had the same impression. "I buried the famous General Meredith's father last night in my cathedral; he was ninety-six years old, so that Mrs. Pope may live seven years longer."-Letter to Gay, May 4, 1732.

quent owner of the property; but its ancient name was Godscroft. The baptism of the poet's mother, together with that of three of her sisters, is recorded in the parish register of Worsborough, and is quoted by Mr. Hunter in his account of the Deanery of Doncaster:

1641. Nov. 20, baptised Martha, daughter of Mr. William Turner. 1642. June 18, baptised Edith, daughter of Mr. William Turner. 1643. Sept. 1, baptised Margaret, daughter of Mr. William Turner. 1645. Nov. 25, baptised Jane, daughter of Mr. William Turner.

Neither Mr. Hunter nor a previous genealogist, Brooke, had been able to trace this William Turner's connexion with Worsborough (of which he was apparently not a native), or to bring to light any circumstances of his situation in life; but the former concludes that the addition of "Mr." would not have been at that period given to his name if he had not been

regarded as something above the mere yeomanry of the time.11 The same addition, it will be recollected, distinguishes Shakspeare's father, in the town records of Stratford-upon-Avon, from a certain John Shakspeare, a shoemaker, who long troubled and confused the antiquaries. Another sister of the poet's mother, named Christiana, was married to Samuel Cooper, the celebrated portrait-painter, to whom both Cromwell and Charles the Second sat, and whose widow is said to have enjoyed a pension from the French Court, in acknowledgment of similar services by her husband. Cooper was termed "Vandyke in miniature," and he was the friend of Butler, author of Hudibras-honourable distinctions to him both as an artist and a man. He died in London in 1672; there is no mention of the Popes in his will-the connexion was in all probability not then formed-but one of the witnesses to the will is "Thomasin Turner," no doubt the mother or an elder sister of Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Pope. Mrs. Cooper survived till 1693, and from her will we learn something of other maternal relatives of the poet. She leaves small legacies to her sisters, Elizabeth Turner, Alice Mawhood, Mary Turner; also to her sister Marc, and her sister Jane Smith; and to her sister Pope is this bequest: "My necklace of pearl and a grinding-stone and muller, and my mother's picture in limning." To her brothers (brothers-in-law), Marc, Calvert, Pope, and Smith, she leaves each a broad piece of gold. The poet, then only five years of age, is not forgotten: "To my nephew and godson, Alexander Pope, my painted china dish, with a silver foot and a dish to set it in; and, after my sister Elizabeth Turner's decease, I give him all my books, pictures, and medals set in gold or otherwise." The nephew, even in infancy, must have exhibited a fondness for books and pictures, and his personal deformity combined with this may have suggested that he should become an artist and inherit the "grinding-stone and muller" which his uncle-in-law had used with so much success. Mrs. Cooper, in her will, desires to be decently buried at the parish church of St. Pancras, as near my dear husband as may be;" and against the south wall of St. Pancras Church is a tablet, surmounted by a palette and

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11 Hunter's Deanery of Doncaster, v. ii. p. 292.